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Perhaps Newt Gingrich is finally seeing the handwriting on the wall (Dick Cheney beat him on this account long ago), and figures the tide has turned against fighting the progress being made on the LGBT civil rights front when it comes to the right of same-sex couples to marry. (Buzzfeed‘s Chris Geidner):
“The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to … accommodate and deal with reality. And the reality is going to be that in a number of American states — and it will be more after 2014 — gay relationships will be legal, period,” Gingrich told The Huffington Post in a story published on Thursday.
Gingrich “continued to profess a belief that marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman,” Sam Stein and Jon Ward report, but “suggested that the party (and he himself) could accept a distinction between a ‘marriage in a church from a legal document issued by the state’ — the latter being acceptable.”
Of the change, though, Gingrich said, “I think that this will be much more difficult than immigration for conservatism to come to grips with.”
It’s time to get a grip and move on. This is a major public shift because Gingrich oversaw passage of the DOMA when he served as speaker of the House in the 1990s.
Regarding the time when Gingrich served as House speaker and the Defense of Marriage Act, now before the Supreme Court, was put up for debate, he said, “I didn’t think that was inevitable 10 or 15 years ago, when we passed the Defense of Marriage Act. It didn’t seem at the time to be anything like as big a wave of change as we are now seeing.”
Several others involved in the 1996 law’s passage — including Rep. Bob Barr, who sponsored the legislation, and President Clinton, who signed it into law — have since said that they now oppose DOMA and support marriage equality.
It will be interesting to see how the social conservatives will react to this. From a PR perspective, Gingrich’s move is a signal that the fringe bigots may be the ones going under the bus in the next election cycle. The homophobes and bible beaters still hold a lot of sway, and it’s going to be hard for the mainstream conservatives (I won’t bother using the term “moderate” – I think the GOP extinguished and expelled those folks long ago) to break that relationship. After all the fringe activist base knows how to organize and get out the vote.
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Someone needs to point out the painfully obvious to everyone else fact to Newt, he is irrelevant.
Indeed, the Department of Homeland Celebrity, a little known pseudo-ad hoc privatized governmental agency, based in the Ddepartment of the Interior office in Des Moines, Iowa, has revoked Newt Gingrich’s “celebrity” status. Everything he thinks or says is now officially irrelevent. The only way the former speaker can regain his celebrity/relevancy status is if he; 1)finds a cure for cancer 2)saves the life of human being in peril 3)is instrumental in negotiating peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, or 4) wins the Indy 500.
But Newty will not be alone. I’m sure we’ll begin to see how many of our die hard culture warriors were only soldiers for power and profit. As soon as the paths to shareholder value and value-voters hearts diverge, the principals of principled conservatism will find new hills to die on.
Don’t you love a serial adulterer lecturing the rest of us about the sanctity of marriage?
A few too many people pointed out what a hypocrite he was?
If I were Callista, I’d be more than a little worried that Newt seems to expanded the eligible pool for Spouse #4 by 2x in one fell swoop. Time to settle down with a nice boy, Newtie?
(ed. note: Gingrich should always be referred to as “disgraced former Speaker Newt Gingrich.” It’s important to remind short-attention-span Americans of the huge cloud under which his own GOP caucus ousted him from his position as second-in-line to the presidency.
tt….OTOH, wouldn’t HE be an expert in an obtuse kinda way???
Burglars and robbers speak on “home security”.
As long as Newt sees and area he can make money from he will change his views accordingly. He sees the sea change in attitude occuring and will jump on the ship to be far ahead of his colleagues if he spots an opportunity.
Holy crap, the Mayans may have been right after all! And with a big winter storm coming in, has anyone checked the temp in hell?
“The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to … accommodate and deal with reality.”
OK — that, coming from Newt Gingrich, cracked me up completely.
Good luck, Newt — just think about who you’re talking to.